On the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit was poured out, Peter stood up and preached that powerful sermon and 3,000 people became a part of the body of Christ. As I've said in previous lessons, that throughout the book of Acts which recorded the first 30 years of Jesus ekklesia: we see 3 things happening which are prayer, proclamation and then formation. The 3 things of any apostolic movement were present. First we had the 120 in the Upper Room in one accord praying. Once the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the 120 Peter stood and boldly proclaimed the gospel through the Spirit’s power.
What happened on that day was a fulfillment of Ezekiel's vision, where he saw a valley of dry bones being assembled and coming back to life. As the Holy Spirit came there was a sound of fiery tongues and a rattling of the bones. The breath of God entered into the dry bones of Jerusalem’s ritualistic temple worship and a new temple came together being built out of living stones, bone to bone. In the book of Acts, we see a progressive formation of Christ body take shape. You see the sacrifice of prayer, worship, sharing with one another, evangelism, teaching, prophecy, healings, deliverance, outpourings of the Spirit, signs and wonders. However, in the midst of all this there was an order that began to take form.
Paul laid out this pattern for building the community of the faithful through his apostolic ministry. It’s in the book of Ephesians that he lays out a framework for accomplishing the mission by taking the keys of the kingdom and setting prisoners free. Ephesians chapter 2 says: we are being fitted together. It’s like a puzzle piece where each part fits in its proper position forming a picture.
You can have a box of puzzle pieces and throw them on the table, but they don’t make any sense until you begin to put them together, piece by piece. It’s only then that you see the picture. You are a piece of the puzzle, called the body of Christ and it’s important that you understand your part, find your place and work with others to make a beautiful picture. You were created to fulfill a purpose, but it is up to you to take responsibility for your ability because no one else can do it for you.
The author Myles Monroe once said that the greatest tragedy in life is not death, but life ... life that fails to fulfill its purpose and potential.
Your potential is the ability God has given you to do what He has called you to do. God never calls us to do something He has not given us the ability to achieve. Formation is about coming together where each member understands their gifts and roles complementing one another.
In a previous lesson, we looked at the four pictures of a temple, an army, a body and a family, showing us that the body of Christ is all about teamwork. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 25 tells us to not forsake our assembling together. In each of the four pictures that I used in Lesson 45:The Body of Christ, I showed you that the body of Christ is not just a collection of puzzle pieces, but the Holy Spirit assembles us together to accomplish mission.
Have you ever bought something off of Amazon and it arrives at your house in a box? Let’s say you bought a desk for your home office. You bring the box in the house, open it up and pour it out with all the different pieces on your living room floor. Well you have all the pieces for a desk, but you don’t have the functionality of a desk because its just separate pieces on your living room floor.
You know that you can have prayer along with proclamation, but if you don’t have formation then you just have a bunch of pieces of the body of Christ without functionality. It’s why we need apostolic teams, so that the pieces can be assembled together for their proper functioning. It’s only as organizational formation begins to happen that the body can begin to accomplish its mission.
Jesus said I will build my ekklesia and building means each piece being fitted together and assembled for functionality.
Organization is almost a dirty word among some groups. However, it takes some level of organization to accomplish just about any task. Let’s look at the menial task of getting groceries which all of us have to do each week. You make a list and get to the grocery store. If you are like me, then you start in the produce section and follow your list. It’s not an exact process because you are always remembering something else that you need as you go along. It’s the same way when we fulfill mission.
We should have a plan, but the Holy Spirit is the one leading and he shows us many things along the way because we never have the whole plan when we start.
If you have a partner or children you might send them for a task, as you go through the store making it a team effort. As you go through the self-checkout that’s a whole process of organizing, scanning and bagging. Then the process of paying for what you are buying. If you are smart then you have a budget of what you are going to spend even before you leave for the store. Then as you shop you’re calculating how much each item costs trying to stay close to your budget. Once you bag your groceries, then you put them in the car. Once you get to the house you take them out and begin to organize them in your house.
It takes planning, organization and the flexibility to change course as needed to get things done.
The natural order of creation clearly shows us organizational structure is absolutely needed. A body without an organized skeletal system is just a mass of tissue and unable to accomplish anything without the structure that the skeletal system provides. A team without organization is chaos, however organization is not the end, it’s simply a means to accomplishing the mission which is helping others.
Let’s just take a look at our prototype Jesus who is our ultimate pattern. Think about when he fed the five thousand. They did not just start passing out food because it would have turned into a chaotic mess. The Bible says that Jesus had his disciples organize the massive amount of people into groups of 50. You will also see that Jesus organized his ministry around different group sizes. You had the 3 disciples who were part of his inner circle John, James and Peter. You had the12 apostles and then you see that Jesus sent out the 70 to do mission. Jesus had a treasurer who managed the finances because it took money to travel, feed and provide for the movement.
Jesus was organized around his mission. We see that he developed a leadership team and managers to help him implement the vision.
An apostolic movement requires that power and function are given to others through equipping. Leaders in the book of Acts were consistently sharing their authority with others through discipleship and equipping. The early church survived and thrived because it wasn’t built on the faulty foundation of man worship, where power was concentrated under a hierarchical structure. Authority was dispersed rather than concentrated in one man. It was an apostolic movement born in the soil of the cruciform life of denying self. It was a participatory pattern based on fellowship, mutual honor and living out the cruciform life through the cooperative hearts of servants.
Leadership has two purposes. Number one it’s necessary for the fulfilling of mission and number two it’s necessary for dealing with conflict resolution. Leadership is about supporting and undergirding the members of the body so that they can fulfill the mission of the ekklesia.
You know what’s going to happen when you get a community together? You're going to have conflict and part of the reason for leadership is to help with conflict resolution. In Matthew chapter 18 before Jesus said where two or three are gathered I am in your midst He talked about accountability in a community.
In Matthew chapter 18 verse 15 thru 17 Jesus talks about dealing with conflict. Jesus said if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen then tell it to the community of the faithful.
As Jesus is talking about the ekklesia He definitely shows us that the community must have some type of accountability structure to effectively deal with conflict resolution. Paul talks about this same subject in many of his epistles. Jesus and Paul both give leadership of the ekklesia the authority to allow certain kinds of behavior in and out of the community. This leadership authority has nothing to do with salvation, but with the unity, safety and protection of the community.
It takes mature leadership to handle conflict resolution in a godly manner because long suffering, love and mercy is the method.
A lot of people see leaders as the head, but the Jesus style of leadership is more like being the feet. On the last night before they partook of the last supper Jesus humbled himself as a servant and washed the feet of his disciples. He was demonstrating the participatory pattern He wanted from His leaders which is to be like feet that support the body. As I’ve said leadership is about supporting and undergirding the members of the body so that they can fulfill the mission. Leaders are simply mature facilitators. Jesus Christ was the only fully gifted human. When he ascended, he chose to create an interdependent, multifaceted, corporate body, as the only entity that could contain his gifts.
No individual was ever meant to show the fullness of Christ to the world. We are meant to do that through redeemed communities.
Many people view leadership as having a position, but leadership in the kingdom is defined as using your gifts to serve others. It doesn’t matter if you are a teacher in the church, a businessman, professional athlete or an apostle you are called to serve. Leadership is serving others with the God-given talents you have received. There are positions of leadership in the church which should be recognized and respected, but the men and women who fill these places must have a servant’s heart. Our leadership commitment must be that we preach not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.
Part of the qualifications which Paul gave for these positions which he called elders or mature facilitators were to be gentle, peace loving and being willing to serve others.
Peter said that elders or mature facilitators should not be demanding or act like dictators, but should lead by the example of servant hood. Selfish ambition and lack of humility has become the driving force of our culture which is completely contradictory to Jesus lifestyle and the way he wants us to live our lives. So the two purposes of leadership are keeping us focused on mission and dealing with conflict.
As we shall see, even in the book of Acts, organizational development is inseparably related to fulfilling needs and dealing with conflict. In Acts chapter 6, the apostles set up an organized program to feed and take care of the widows in Jerusalem, as a result of an ethnic dispute that arose between Jew and Greek widows.
Paul in responding to a prophetic word that Agubus gave concerning a famine in Judea, organized the collection, gathering and distribution of needed supplies to that region. Then in Acts chapter 15 a major dispute over the Mosaic law and a sectarian conflict which was bringing great harm to the mission of the ekklesia was resolved through a council of leaders.
Structural organization should be designed to meet clear objectives, but it needs to be flexible. We live in a fast-paced world that is constantly changing and we need to keep up to date by changing with the needs presented to us. Organizational structure is needed and Paul used the human body over and over again to describe a flexible, adaptable organization.
As a result of our collective gathering together we need an organizational model and common set of ideas so that the community does not dissolve into chaos.
Jesus chose an interesting word which is ekklesia to denote the type of organization his body would be and how it would function. The ekklesia was first developed as a ruling assembly of citizens in the Grecian democracy to govern its city-states. The Greek and Roman versions of the ekklesia appeared in different forms and sizes: the assemblies were not a one size fits all.
In like manner there are no cookie cutters when it comes to establishing the ekklesia that Jesus is building.
He has given us great flexibility to be pragmatic. The ekklesia was not tied to one location or building like the Temple, but it was to be a mobile people movement. Jesus gave us a mission, but he never told us exactly how to fulfill that mission and if you look around today at what we call the church you can see we have a lot of different forms.
I’ve seen a lot of people side tracked from the mission, sitting around criticizing others about how they are trying to fulfill the mission. I want to caution you, to not become an idealistic reactionary, thinking that your form of church is superior. Please refrain from that exercise because it’s counterproductive. I don’t want you to focus on what others are doing or not doing, but I want you to discover, develop and expand the part you are to play.
The goal of the following lessons in this discipleship course is to help you find your place in the formation of Jesus ekklesia.
I want you to think of Jesus ekklesia as a decentralized network of disciples, leaders, small groups and large groups tied together through the bond of the body and blood of Christ. I want you to began to see yourself as part of an apostolic movement equipping, empowering, collaborating and networking with like minded believers co-laboring to fulfill the Great Commission. I want you to find your place in this net of relationships we call the ekklesia so you can do your part.
Jesus did not give us a blueprint on organizational structure and as the old saying goes there is more than one way to skin a cat or there is more than one way to get from point A to point B.
In the next few lessons I am going to present some ideas on formation. It’s not my intention to tell you how to do it, but to simply give you some basic guidelines for leadership and the management of Jesus ekklesia. I worked 20 years in corporate America, but I also spent 15 years as a missionary, church planter and teacher in discipleship schools.
If you’ve ever spent time around another culture then you quickly realize everyone doesn’t think the same way. Sociology is the study of people groups. How they relate, communicate, organize and live together. I’ve witnessed idealism to be one of the greatest hindrances to advancing the ekklesia. What I mean by idealism, is that when you say things have to be done a certain way, regardless of whether its working or not. It’s being rigid and inflexible which works like a bike chain that’s rusted. Yeah I can move the bike, but it takes a lot of effort because it’s not functioning as it should.
Just as there is not a one size fits all for human governments, I don’t see a one size fits all for building Jesus ekklesia. I tend to lean towards pragmatism instead of idealism.
To understand what I’m saying lets look at the differences between the Russians and the Chinese when it came to how they have adapted, as societies under the organizational model of Communism. The Russians were idealists and implemented the communist system by the book. Like Margret Thatcher so famously said, the problem with socialism or communism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. It’s exactly what happened to the Russians and their economy collapsed bringing monumental change. I was old enough to have watched Ronald Reagan tell Mikel Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.
The Chinese fully adopted Communism in 1948, however when they saw it wasn’t working, they adapted in the 1970’s and became pragmatic. The Chinese are pragmatists. A pragmatist takes ideas and puts flesh on it bringing it to life so it can function.
I am proposing pragmatism when it comes to advancing Jesus ekklesia, not idealism.
If you’ve been following this school then you know when it comes to foundational doctrine we must follow the words of Christ and the apostles doctrine. Foundations do not change, they must be rigid, fixed and immovable upon the rock of Christ. However, the Holy Spirit is mentioned fifty-six times in Paul’s letters with the vast majority referring to his indwelling the community. In regards to building the church Paul called himself a wise master builder. In 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 10 thru 11 Paul says, according to the grace of God given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it.
Christ is the fountainhead, from which all wisdom flows and it's that wisdom within our hearts that we need to learn to yield to, so that we function properly.
We each have a common foundation, but we also each have an individual part to fulfill which makes us unique in God's mighty plan. The Holy Spirit empowers us to be like Christ and also to be ourselves. This is called the manifold wisdom of God as articulated in Ephesians chapter 3 verse 10.
Just as Joseph, Abraham’s favorite son had a coat of many colors, so God has woven a beautiful tapestry together called the body of Christ. The body is made up of many individual colors masterfully woven together through the wisdom of God to display the likeness of Christ.
Christ wants each member of His body to come under His headship walking in the rhythms of his grace so that we can receive His vision for our lives. God has a ministry specifically hand tailored to fit your unique personality. He has gifted each part of His body to bring forth an expression of Himself. We have not been given a one size fits all when it comes to the forming of Christ ekklesia.
As I’ve said in previous lessons, the ekklesia is more than a social club, it’s the body of Christ which is fulfilling the mission of Christ by implementing and maintaining four main practices.
Number one is teaching the pure doctrine of the word, which includes discipleship and equipping believers to do the work of the ministry. Number two is the practice of water baptism which is a public demonstration and a sign or witness that you are a member of the body of Christ. Number three is the partaking of the body and blood of Christ on a regular basis among the community of the faithful which is essentially fellowship and prayer. Number four is having some type of leadership structure which is about accountability and formation of Christlike qualities.
Idealism is saying we have to do things an exact way following a rule book with no flexibility. I’m not speaking against denomination's, but it's how denomination’s are formed which is pretty much just franchising the church. Can it work? Yes, but there are alternatives.
Contextualization is understanding your environment and adapting.
The core of our mission which is implementing the four main practices of Jesus ekklesia never changes, but the form can vary depending on the context. The body of Christ can take on many different forms, depending on the context because Jesus's body is to be flexible, adaptable and changeable. What I hope to do in the next few lessons is give you some basic guidelines for leadership and the management of Jesus ekklesia.
In the book of Acts you see two organizational models emerge. The James apostolic model which is more centralized and static. Then you have the Pauline apostolic model which is more decentralized and mobile. Jerusalem is where it all began and immediately you had thousands of Jewish believers, who were still holding on to some of the old doctrinal and hierarchical ways of organizing under the Mosaic law. Did it work? Yes it did work for the context of Jerusalem. However, was it a reproducible model that could be easily adapted and duplicated by others and in other places? I say no. It was not only hard to reproduce, but it wasn’t a very flexible model either.
If you look at Acts chapter 8 there arose a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Centralization works, but it’s also easily controlled and attacked. If you continue on you will see that James was killed then Peter was imprisoned. Stop and think about what happened in 2020 when the world shut down due to the COVID pandemic.
In our rapidly changing world things can change very quickly so we need to build organizations that are able to adapt, change and implement new strategies quickly. It’s why Jesus taught a participatory decentralized flexible pattern for his ekklesia.
What you see happen in the book of Acts is a shift from a focus on the centralization of James and Peter in Jerusalem to Paul who developed a decentralized apostolic team of church planters. It’s through Paul's ministry that we began to see a reproducible model of formation develop.
In Acts chapter 13 Barnabas and Paul were set apart as an apostolic team then sent out. As they went forth praying and proclaiming the gospel using the keys of the kingdom to set captives free they then made disciples forming communities of believers in the cities they visited. The apostolic team was building a net of organizational relationships, but before they could move on to do it again they appointed a leadership team to oversee, guide, encourage, instruct and equip the outpost they had established.
As I’ve said: leadership is about supporting and undergirding the members of the body so that they can fulfill the mission. Leaders are simply mature facilitators which the Bible calls elders. In the book of Acts, the epistles of Paul, Peter, John and James we see the term elder used as denoting those mature servant facilitators who were given authority to lead and govern the local community of believers that were established.
The usage of the term elders has a long history in Israel’s redemptive story, but I’m not going to get into all the intricacies of the Jewish usage. I don’t want to get hung up on terms, semantics and word usage because that can move us over into idealism which may not work in differing contexts. Paul, out of all the apostolic leaders, was very pragmatic which I call apostolic wisdom.
What I want to do is focus on the functionality of elders, mature facilitators or the leadership team which are all interchangeable terms as I am using them. You say tomato I say tomatoe, but we are both talking about the little red squishy fruit we cut up and put on our salads.
In Ephesians chapter 4, we see five leadership gifts which are apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherds and teachers. Christ has distributed these leadership gifts to his body, however being an elder is not a gift, it’s an office or a leadership position. I am going to teach you that I believe it’s necessary for elders to have one of these gifts in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11, but the term elder, when used in the Bible, is referring to the organizational leadership structure for local expressions of the body of Christ. It’s about governing the day to day functions that any community requires.
In I Peter chapter 5 verse 2 and Acts chapter 20 verse 28 the purpose of elders is explained which is two fold.
Number one is to oversee. The term is used in the sense of a shepherd looking over his sheep. The shepherd was to make sure the sheep were healthy. He broke up fighting sheep and dealt with conflict resolution. The shepherd took daily care for his flock. Calling back straying sheep, but he also had a rod that he would yield to protect and keep wolves out of the flock.
The second purpose of elders was to feed and nourish the flock. The spiritual leaders are responsible for feeding good spiritual food. Now you will discover that the term elders is always used in the plural form which indicates this authority was not to reside in one person, but a team. The exact number of elders needed will be determined by the size of the community and the amount of work to be done. In the organizational development of the church we see another office for organizational structure develop.
In Acts chapter 6, when the apostles had to deal with the conflict that arose over the management of food distribution, we see them choose servants to help them. Although the word deacon is never mentioned in Acts 6, it became a term used by Paul, alongside elders, as the organizational structure of the local body of believers. Paul opened up his epistle to the Phillipian’s saying: to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the elders and deacons. The English word deacon is taken from the Greek word diakonos which means to be a 'servant'. The Bible never gives us the duties of deacons, but it is taken for granted that their duties had to do with management.
Contextualization is understanding your audience and the culture that you are reaching. The main audience I am reaching is an American audience. As Americans we are all familiar with the terms leadership and management.
As I said, I worked 20 years in corporate America. I can tell you that to effectively run any endeavor you must have both leaders and managers. Paul was an organizational expert, so he knew it took both leadership and management to accomplish the mission of the ekklesia.
To properly understand leadership we must first distinguish it from management. Leadership and management are both required for the administration of almost every venture, but they must be recognized as separate, being kept within their own spheres of authority. It’s what Paul did. He differentiated leaders using the term elders from managers using the term deacons.
To make it simple, leaders are big picture oriented while managers are detail task oriented and you need both to be successful.
Leadership sets the course of the mission keeping us on track and deals with the obstacles of conflict while management helps in practically getting task done. The two must learn to cooperate to accomplish anything of value. Many times you will find tension between these two aspects of accomplishing a task. It’s very similar to the husband and wife relationship which is about working as a team to lead and manage the family.
In the next lesson I will go over the qualifications that are required for those who fill these two offices. One of the main qualifications is being able to work with others in a constructive way by being gentle, peace loving and willing to serve others.
As I’ve told you throughout this course the goal of my teaching is to make the word of God simple, attainable and applicable.
I personally think we have made things too difficult for the common person to be involved in being a part of the expansion of the ekklesia. The ultimate goal of Jesus for his disciples was that his life be reproduced in them and through them into the lives of others. . . . Reproduction was our Lord’s desire. . . . But multiplication was the ultimate end. Making disciples is about Christ being formed in believers, but it’s also about multiplying leaders who can carry on the mission.
No, everyone is not going to be a leader because we each have our part to play, but we must develop new leaders for the expansion of the body. It’s why I put this school together. In the next lesson I am going to give you the qualifications for elders, deacons and help you to begin to understand how the gifts of Christ in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 11 helps us to function as the body of Christ.
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Next Lesson: Lesson 48: Part II Order In The Church
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